EDUCATION
An insight into IB Art
We take a look into the oft-neglected IB Group 6 Subjects to see what benefits art brings to students.
© Pexels
Valentin Stewart in Spring Hill, Brisbane
Many spend their entire IB career focused on STEM, choosing to disregard the "Group 6" subjects entirely and opt instead to take a second science or humanities. However, this might ultimately be to the detriment of many students.
IB Art can teach you how to express and communicate in new ways. It also reinforces an extremely important skill: human creativity. Creativity enables you to think about the world around you in new ways and try new things and gives you a new aspect on life.
To highlight the importance of embracing the arts, I interviewed a Grade 12 IB Art student, Christian Jaensch.
A 3D sculpture with a focus on dynamic expression
How long have you been "doing" art?
Jaensch: I’ve always been super into art. I drew a ton as a kid. I think I started to take it more seriously around 2018-19 and from there I’ve just put all my eggs into the one basket.
What are your preferred mediums?
Jaensch: I like to try a bunch of different stuff. More recently I’ve been super into digital sculpting and 3D modelling, but I also sketch a lot in standard HB pencil. I do a lot of 2D work digitally as well, although not as much recently. Last year I tried charcoal for the first time which was super fun and I want to do a lot more with it, I really enjoyed how easy to rework it is.
I have so many artists I love! – Claire Wendling and Eliza Ivanova are two I’m studying for my comparative study and their work is so nice, absolutely check them out. Steven Yaffe, Erin Shin, Joohyung Seo and Goro Fujita are also incredibly talented fantastic artists who are huge inspirations. If anyone wants to learn better anatomy Sinix Design on YouTube makes super helpful interesting videos that I highly recommend. Another massive inspiration for me is Drawfee, who make less educational, more silly content which always helps me to take the pressure off my art and bring me back to just making bad art for fun sometimes.
Keep up with what’s happening.
Sketch of an original character
What's your art process like?
Jaensch: Incredibly unstructured and inefficient. If I’m serious about it (usually when it’s for school) I take the base idea and make some small thumbnail sketches before moving on to the larger sketch. I don’t do linework too often anymore as I find it can be a bit stiff and lose the energy of my initial sketch, so I usually just clean up my sketch lines. When I’m making something for fun I rarely actually start with a formed idea and I just kind of go and see what happens. A lot of my favourite pieces happened this way.
What's your favourite part of the art process?
Jaensch: I love adding details and reworking what I already have. With a painting, I often just block out big shapes and refine and rework until I have something I’m happy with. It’s super relaxing, and I love when I actually get to that point in a piece rather than scrapping it because I got bored.
Opinions on IB Art and taking IB Art?
Jaensch: As someone who’s [also] done senior ATAR art, IB art is absolutely my favourite of the two. My main issue is the amount of writing, but, again, there’s so much less than in ATAR. The art teacher last year had a much less structured approach to his teaching, which didn’t personally work for me, but I think with more of a structure it’d be a lot more fun – which is what Lucinda has been doing and is working a lot better for me so far.
Fully rigged 3D fanart of Eugene Finch from Drawtectives
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